Leonard Susskind: My friend Richard Feynman

Leonard Susskind: My friend Richard Feynman

I decided when I was asked to do this that what I really wanted to talk about
was my friend, Richard Feynman. I was one of the fortunate few
that really did get to know him and enjoyed his presence. And I’m going to tell you
about the Richard Feynman that I knew. I’m sure there are people here
who could tell you about the Richard Feynman they knew, and it would probably be
a different Richard Feynman. Richard Feynman was a very complex man. He was a man of many, many parts. He was, of course, foremost,
a very, very, very great scientist. He was an actor. You saw him act. I also had the good fortune
to be in those lectures, up in the balcony. They were fantastic. He was a philosopher. He was a drum player. He was a teacher par excellence. Richard Feynman was also a showman, an enormous showman. He was brash, irreverent. He was full of macho,
a kind of macho one-upmanship. He loved intellectual battle. He had a gargantuan ego. But the man had, somehow, a lot of room at the bottom. And what I mean by that
is a lot of room, in my case — I can’t speak for anybody else,
but in my case — a lot of room for another big ego. Well, not as big as his, but fairly big. I always felt good with Dick Feynman. It was always fun to be with him. He always made me feel smart. How can somebody like that
make you feel smart? Somehow he did. He made me feel smart.
He made me feel he was smart. He made me feel we were both smart, and the two of us could solve
any problem whatever. And in fact, we did sometimes
do physics together. We never published a paper together, but we did have a lot of fun. He loved to win, win these little macho games
we would sometimes play. And he didn’t only play them with me,
but with all sorts of people. He would almost always win. But when he didn’t win, when he lost, he would laugh and seem
to have just as much fun as if he had won. I remember once he told me a story about a joke the students played on him. I think it was for his birthday — they took him for lunch to a sandwich place in Pasadena. It may still exist; I don’t know. Celebrity sandwiches was their thing. You could get a Marilyn Monroe sandwich. You could get a Humphrey Bogart sandwich. The students went there in advance, and arranged that they’d all order
Feynman sandwiches. One after another, they came in
and ordered Feynman sandwiches. Feynman loved this story. He told me this story,
and he was really happy and laughing. When he finished the story, I said to him, “Dick, I wonder what
would be the difference between a Feynman sandwich
and a Susskind sandwich.” And without skipping a beat at all, he said, “Well, they’d be about the same. The only difference is a Susskind
sandwich would have a lot more ham.” “Ham” as in bad actor. (Laughter) Well, I happened to have been
very quick that day, and I said, “Yeah,
but a lot less baloney.” (Laughter) (Applause) The truth of the matter is that a Feynman sandwich
had a load of ham, but absolutely no baloney. What Feynman hated worse
than anything else was intellectual pretense — phoniness, false sophistication, jargon. I remember sometime during the mid-’80s, Dick and I and Sidney Coleman
would meet a couple of times up in San Francisco —
at some very rich guy’s house — up in San Francisco for dinner. And the last time the rich guy invited us, he also invited a couple of philosophers. These guys were philosophers of mind. Their specialty was the philosophy
of consciousness. And they were full of all kinds of jargon. I’m trying to remember the words — “monism,” “dualism,”
categories all over the place. I didn’t know what those meant, neither
did Dick or Sydney, for that matter. And what did we talk about? Well, what do you talk about
when you talk about minds? There’s one obvious thing to talk about: Can a machine become a mind? Can you build a machine that thinks like a human being
that is conscious? We sat around and talked about this —
we of course never resolved it. But the trouble with the philosophers is that they were philosophizing when they should have been
science-ophizing. It’s a scientific question, after all. And this was a very, very
dangerous thing to do around Dick Feynman. (Laughter) Feynman let them have it —
both barrels, right between the eyes. It was brutal; it was funny —
ooh, it was funny. But it was really brutal. He really popped their balloon. But the amazing thing was —
Feynman had to leave a little early; he wasn’t feeling too well,
so he left a little bit early. And Sidney and I were left there
with the two philosophers. And the amazing thing
is these guys were flying. They were so happy. They had met the great man; they had been instructed by the great man; they had an enormous amount of fun having their faces shoved in the mud … And it was something special. I realized there was something
just extraordinary about Feynman, even when he did what he did. Dick — he was my friend;
I did call him Dick — Dick and I had a little bit of a rapport. I think it may have been a special
rapport that he and I had. We liked each other;
we liked the same kind of things. I also like the intellectual macho games. Sometimes I would win,
mostly he would win, but we both enjoyed them. And Dick became convinced at some point that he and I had
some kind of similarity of personality. I don’t think he was right. I think the only point
of similarity between us is we both like to talk about ourselves. But he was convinced of this. And the man was incredibly curious. And he wanted to understand
what it was and why it was that there was this funny connection. And one day, we were walking. We were in France, in Les Houches. We were up in the mountains, 1976. And Feynman said to me, “Leonardo …” The reason he called me “Leonardo”
is because we were in Europe, and he was practicing his French. (Laughter) And he said, “Leonardo, were you closer to your mother
or your father when you were a kid?” I said, “Well, my real hero was my father. He was a working man, had a fifth-grade education. He was a master mechanic,
and he taught me how to use tools. He taught me all sorts of things
about mechanical things. He even taught me the Pythagorean theorem. He didn’t call it the hypotenuse, he called it the shortcut distance.” And Feynman’s eyes just opened up. He went off like a lightbulb. And he said that he had had basically exactly the same
relationship with his father. In fact, he had been convinced at one time that to be a good physicist, it was very important to have had
that kind of relationship with your father. I apologize for the sexist
conversation here, but this is the way it really happened. He said he had been absolutely
convinced that this was necessary, a necessary part of the growing up
of a young physicist. Being Dick, he, of course,
wanted to check this. He wanted to go out and do an experiment. (Laughter) Well, he did. He went out and did an experiment. He asked all his friends
that he thought were good physicists, “Was it your mom or your pop
that influenced you?” They were all men, and to a man, every single
one of them said, “My mother.” (Laughter) There went that theory,
down the trash can of history. (Laughter) But he was very excited
that he had finally met somebody who had the same experience
with his father as he had with his father. And for some time, he was convinced
this was the reason we got along so well. I don’t know. Maybe. Who knows? But let me tell you a little bit
about Feynman the physicist. Feynman’s style —
no, “style” is not the right word. “Style” makes you think
of the bow tie he might have worn, or the suit he was wearing. It’s something much deeper than that, but I can’t think of another word for it. Feynman’s scientific style
was always to look for the simplest, most elementary solution
to a problem that was possible. If it wasn’t possible,
you had to use something fancier. No doubt, part of this
was his great joy and pleasure in showing people that he could
think more simply than they could. But he also deeply believed,
he truly believed, that if you couldn’t explain
something simply, you didn’t understand it. In the 1950s, people
were trying to figure out how superfluid helium worked. There was a theory. It was due to a Russian
mathematical physicist. It was a complicated theory; I’ll tell you what it was soon enough. It was a terribly complicated theory, full of very difficult
integrals and formulas and mathematics and so forth. And it sort of worked,
but it didn’t work very well. The only way it worked is when the helium atoms
were very, very far apart. And unfortunately, the helium atoms in liquid helium
are right on top of each other. Feynman decided, as a sort
of amateur helium physicist, that he would try to figure it out. He had an idea, a very clear idea. He would try to figure out what the quantum wave function
of this huge number of atoms looked like. He would try to visualize it, guided by a small number
of simple principles. The small number of simple principles
were very, very simple. The first one was that when
helium atoms touch each other, they repel. The implication of that is that
the wave function has to go to zero, it has to vanish when the helium
atoms touch each other. The other fact
is that in the ground state — the lowest energy state
of a quantum system — the wave function is always very smooth; it has the minimum number of wiggles. So he sat down — and I imagine he had nothing more than a simple piece
of paper and a pencil — and he tried to write down,
and did write down, the simplest function
that he could think of, which had the boundary conditions that the wave function
vanish when things touch and is smooth in between. He wrote down a simple thing —
so simple, in fact, that I suspect a really smart
high-school student who didn’t even have calculus could understand what he wrote down. The thing was, that simple thing
that he wrote down explained everything that was known
at the time about liquid helium, and then some. I’ve always wondered
whether the professionals — the real professional helium physicists — were just a little bit
embarrassed by this. They had their super-powerful technique, and they couldn’t do as well. Incidentally, I’ll tell you
what that super-powerful technique was. It was the technique of Feynman diagrams. (Laughter) He did it again in 1968. In 1968, in my own university —
I wasn’t there at the time — they were exploring
the structure of the proton. The proton is obviously made
of a whole bunch of little particles; this was more or less known. And the way to analyze it was,
of course, Feynman diagrams. That’s what Feynman diagrams
were constructed for — to understand particles. The experiments that were going on
were very simple: you simply take the proton, and you hit it really sharply
with an electron. This was the thing
the Feynman diagrams were for. The only problem was that
Feynman diagrams are complicated. They’re difficult integrals. If you could do all of them,
you would have a very precise theory, but you couldn’t —
they were just too complicated. People were trying to do them. You could do a one-loop diagram.
Don’t worry about one loop. One loop, two loops —
maybe you could do a three-loop diagram, but beyond that, you couldn’t do anything. Feynman said, “Forget all of that. Just think of the proton as an assemblage, a swarm,
of little particles.” He called them “partons.” He said, “Just think of it as a swarm
of partons moving real fast.” Because they’re moving real fast, relativity says the internal
motions go very slow. The electron hits it suddenly — it’s like taking a very sudden
snapshot of the proton. What do you see? You see a frozen bunch of partons. They don’t move, and because they don’t move
during the course of the experiment, you don’t have to worry
about how they’re moving. You don’t have to worry
about the forces between them. You just get to think of it
as a population of frozen partons.” This was the key to analyzing
these experiments. Extremely effective. Somebody said the word
“revolution” is a bad word. I suppose it is,
so I won’t say “revolution,” but it certainly evolved very, very deeply
our understanding of the proton, and of particles beyond that. Well, I had some more
that I was going to tell you about my connection with Feynman, what he was like, but I see I have exactly half a minute. So I think I’ll just finish up by saying: I actually don’t think
Feynman would have liked this event. I think he would have said,
“I don’t need this.” But … (Laughter) How should we honor Feynman? How should we really honor Feynman? I think the answer
is we should honor Feynman by getting as much baloney
out of our own sandwiches as we can. Thank you. (Applause)

A man motivated to increase his own celebrity, in this case by hitching onto the Feynman wagon.And the story with the philosophers was probably largely bs. I can picture it: physicists who think they have the world figured out better than anybody, completely closed-minded to the difficult point-of-view which the other dinner guests were trying to communicate; or so intent on "winning the debate" that they didn't even try to listen.Read Feynman's lectures and you'll see that he paints a picture of philosophers which is as inaccurate as it is unflattering.

Feynman was one of the scientists to work on the atomic bomb. He convinced himself that he had done it in the cause of civilisation, but I am sure that it I had worked on such a thing I would be constantly worried that I may have created something which could ultimately destroy civilisation.

Entanglement mean SUPER SYMMETRY The Einstein never will have Right Glove and Left Glove, sorry for kinding! ONLY INTO 2015 SEPTEMBER 24 FERMAT' LAST THEOREM ENDED BY SENDING IN FUNDAMENTAL , BUT A LOT BEGAN FROM THERE, MAYBE NECESSARY OR NOT, BUT FOR SURE A PART IS NECESSARY .I am Sorry Ken Ribet, I announced you long time ago, Fermat's Last Theorem need a General solution, You Didn't trusted My , but maybe now you will join for Implications coming from! You See for n= 2k+1 I am Pretty Sure we can Generalize also Euler – Murgu Equation 1=1, but I didn't worked yet on, but I hope next generation in Math or even you will. #NewsFromMTRE #HumanRights #HuamnSociety AN EAGLE IS A EARTH CITIZEN BY NATURAL DEFINITION. #HumanityScienceThesaurus ****** A M E R I C A **** BEEN MAKING HISTORY INTO FUNDAMENTALS INTO EARTH PROUD DAY.INTO 2015 SEPTEMBER 24 – HUMANITY – DISCOVERED THE LOST FUNDAMENTAL WHICH NOW GIVE THE SENSES OF OUR FIELDS DEPENDENCIES (1/R^2) , for it with all honesty I named it ** Humanity Science Thesaurus *House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, America can't to lose HIS two Fundamentals , because with all honesty , are the best ever, SEE HOW THOSE TWO FUNDAMENTALS CLOSED MORE THEN 300 YEARS OF ALL OUR GENIUSES DISPERATE WORK TO Fermat's Last Theorem, a Pertinent Work, because it HIDE a base for Science. @Harvard Via Climatic Disorder DOT COM into Science Saint Day -Earth Proud Day – AMERICA MAKE THE BEST EVER CONTRIBUTION TO HUMANITY UNIVERSAL – TWO FUNDAMENTALS IN SCIENCE. www.climaticdisorder.com/#math #mathematics #science #News #ScienceNews #America #AmericaNews ONLY AND ONLY FERMAT – MURGU IMPOSSIBLE EQUATIONS CAN CERTIFY FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM INTO A MATHEMTICALLY ACCURATE METHOD . NOW FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM IS FUNDAMENTAL IN MATHH AND SCIENCE VIA THIS METHOD .Also Euler – Murgu Equations 1=1(CAN certify FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM) but in the shade of Fermat – Murgu Impossible Equations which PROOF all Solutions For Fermat Equations are at THE BASE IRRATIONAL (all 3 irrational or if one rational or integers absolute 2 of them IRRATIONAL) . Even For Pythagorean Triples The Base Solutions are IRRATIONAL. Then is more then a PROOF, Is a GENERAL SOLUTION.www.climaticdidorder.com/INTO SCIENCE SAINT DAY 2015 SEPTEMBER 24 – AMERICA GET FOR HUMANITY UNIVERSAL – TWO FUNDAMENTALS .via On Ohio, USA , Physicist = Ion Murgu =.Those are: 1. The Lost Fundamental , Ion Murgu Integers Powers Fundamental Equations or as published in First Place – Ion Murgu Math Millennium Equations.2. Fermat's Last Theorem – FUNDAMENTAL – . WHICH CLOSED near of 400 years of all our #Geniuse IntelLectual Stress. ALL STARTED FROM PHYSICS , AND THEN THE PHYSICS ONE MORE TIME STRONG OUR LOGIC BASE TO FUNDAMENTALS.

Sorry for a dumb-ish question. I'm asking as a non-native English speaker: What is this "bellogni" between a sandwich he keeps speaking about? Plus: the audience seems to get it, so what is its cultural significance?

every time i get an insight into feynman it makes me want to kill myself he's not here anymore. its so sad, but so fucking incredible that there ever was someone like that. so in the end I decide to live to my fullest.

The reason Susskind and Feynmann get along is because they are both ENTPs. Ps tend to have stronger fathers, Js stronger mothers. Lots of physicists are INTJs, and ENTPs probably get along better together than ENTP + INTJ.

Partons, loops of wave-package in a snapshot envelope/orbital, representing a particular multiphase-state at the singularity, and equivalent to the one-electron concept.., in the same family of QM pictures of mathematical coordination. (?) I'm allergic to big egos, but not good teachers.. thanks for the story.

Leonard Susskind (/ˈsʌskɪnd/; born 1940) is an American physicist, who is professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Susskind could have learned a thing or two about a proper scientific outlook from Feynman but he did not. The attitude of Feynman was completely unlike the particle physicists and string theorists of today. Everything Feynman did was firmly tethered to REALITY and understanding how things actually worked. Today the focus is on "beautiful theories" and "elegant mathematics". This isn't how an experimental science like physics is supposed to work. First of all, the mathematics ISN'T very elegant, most of the time it's quite ugly in fact. Algebraic topology is beautiful, Riemann surfaces are beautiful, string theory calculations are mostly ugly, tedious and boring. Second, string theorists aren't listening to string theory itself especially when the theory is telling them NO not YES. String theory itself seems to work in only anti deSitter space. All efforts to get around this simply fact fall apart. Anti de Sitter space is in all likelihood a feature of ALL String theory solutions. The universe is NOT in an anti deSitter space. We live in its opposite a deSitter space with a positive cosmological constant. Third, these guys have dominated the subfield of high energy physics for a long time. A disproportionate number of string theorists hold the PhD positions and they award more degrees than there are university positions. They've behaved badly for at least 30 years and pushed their weight around in physics departments. Nasty, arrogant bullies with nothing to show for the forty or so years they've been around. What do they do when decades go by after their theory has failed, change the requirements of the scientific method to make an "exception" for string theory. This is the sad state of how things really are. They have all the PhDs, they have all the tenured positions. The vast majority of string theorists are pseudo mathematicians and not very good physicists. They are poor scientists and the first group to attack the scientific method itself. Particle physics is ruined. Susskind thinks all of this is just DANDY. Feynman would punch him right in the FACTS.

They edited away the first part of the video…. because he took a sip from his pocket flask (!?)…..for those of you who wants to read what he said during the first part: https://singjupost.com/leonard-susskind-on-richard-feynman-at-tedxcaltech-full-transcript/

THE MATHEMATICAL PROOF THAT ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY IN A BALANCED FASHION IS SUCCESSFULLY DEMONSTRATED:

"Mass"/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. THE SUN AND THE EARTH are F=ma AND E=mc2, AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. E=mc2 is DIRECTLY AND FUNDAMENTALLY DERIVED FROM F=ma. F=ma AND E=mc2 PROVE that ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY, AS ALL of SPACE is NECESSARILY ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL (IN BALANCE); AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. "Mass"/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. Energy has/involves GRAVITY, AND ENERGY has/involves inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE. Gravity/acceleration involves BALANCED inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE, AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. This explains F=ma AND E=mc2, AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. SO, GRAVITATIONAL FORCE/ENERGY IS proportional to (or BALANCED with/as) inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE; AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ACCORDINGLY, ALL of SPACE is NECESSARILY ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL (IN BALANCE); AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. "Mass"/ENERGY involves BALANCED inertia/INERTIAL RESISTANCE consistent WITH/AS what is BALANCED ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL FORCE/ENERGY, AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. GREAT !!! Gravity IS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY. ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. INDEED, A PHOTON may be placed at the center of THE SUN (as A POINT, of course); as the reduction of SPACE is offset by (or BALANCED with) the SPEED OF LIGHT; AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. GREAT. "Mass"/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. ALL of SPACE is NECESSARILY ELECTROMAGNETIC/GRAVITATIONAL (IN BALANCE), AS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY. Great. The ability of thought to DESCRIBE OR RECONFIGURE sensory experience is ULTIMATELY dependent upon the extent to which THOUGHT IS SIMILAR TO sensory experience. (THOUGHTS ARE INVISIBLE.) Gravity IS ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY. ELECTROMAGNETISM/ENERGY IS GRAVITY.

Very importantly, outer "space" involves full inertia; AND it is FULLY INVISIBLE AND black. The perpetual motion of WHAT IS THE EARTH is NOW explained. GREAT !!! The idea that THE PLANETS are "falling" in what is "curved space" in RELATION to what is THE SUN is PROVEN to be NONSENSE. So, the falling objects must be considered in RELATION to WHAT IS THEN THE ORBITING EARTH. GREAT !!!!!!!!!!

such an obvious superiority of numbers over ideas..meanwhile the core hypothesis behind materialism that underlines modern physics is just an idea..these guys just have no second thoughts although their linear explanation of space time completely breaks down at the singularities..the disrespect to the function of pure thought and its potention that is responsible for mathematics as well is unbeliavable for such a smart man.. exept if he makes the false eqivalence that since some bojos that claim to be philiosophers in his rich guy friend circles(pretty possible for rich guy circle types) then all philosophers are nothing but bojos..

Feynman's 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?'
was the reason I went to university to study physics, after a few years I started to hate physics and I started to hate Feynman. Now slowly, more than 20 years later, I am started to get interested in mathematical subjects like group theory but not physics.

we should really start calling hypothenuses shortcut-distances instead. scrap the sophistry. feynman would probably approve. i really fully expected at this point of the story that feynman would have jumped on that

@4:50 well, maybe now you're philosophizing here: what's that not-well-defined "thinking" and "being conscious" that you are coming up with?

need help? try diffing a computer and the human brain, try define those "abstract" terms for both "instances", try mathematize it first:

– you'll soon realize there's no actual "thinking", as those are neural networks: they go heuristically, with some optional rationalizing – and you'll then realize there's no "consciousness" too, as that's just a pretentious way to call our "logging what we're focusing on"

I don't understand why it is sexist for a man to have a very good relation with his father and his father as his heroe. I think that it is the most normal thing in the world that a boy learns his role in life which will be a masculine one in the most cases from his father. I suppose that neither Leonard Susskind nor Richard Feinman would have become the personalities they were without this important relation they could rely on for their whole lifetime.